Nope, I absolutely kittening hate it. I found clearing zones in Guild Wars to be a million times more entertaining than sitting around scratching my kitten for hours until I finally, along with a hundred faceless nobodies, get to the brainless bashing.
This is bad, bad, bad. I get the concept behind it but it still sucks.
It’s total dogkitten. Once again I’m locked out of playing on my server due to another awful zerg event. They learned absolutely nothing from Tequatl and short of a huge change in vision I don’t see this game ever improving.
More nerfs to prepare us for the multitude of nerfs coming in the great balance patch.
Does anyone on the balance team actually main necromancer or are they all warriors?
I think the crux of the issue here is that conditions are simply too damaging. And they are this damaging because condition damage is meant to compare to power damage as a primary way of dealing damage. This naturally stems from the fact that we’ve got more than one main damage stat.
Maybe it’s about time that ANet started considering merging these damage stats and making conditions supportive components to damage rotations. Most MMOs do not have this split and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to view it as a positive.
Yes, condi dumpers are fairly brainless to play. Blame ANet for adding Dumbfire when just about all experienced necromancers were against it. It kittened the class to the point of being overly reliant on it.
But the real issue here is that nothing else really works for the necromancer. The class just doesn’t have access to all the fancy tools the other classes get. You’ve got no real mobility to speak of and the only way to block damage is with death shroud. All it does well is dump conditions. That’s it. That’s the entire class right now. Yeah, it sucks but short of a substantial revamp nothing will change here. Necromancers will keep on dumping conditions because that’s what they do.
(edited by Fungalfoot.7213)
I’ve played a lot of MMOs and never before have I seen one with as much blatant class bias as Guild Wars 2. Why on earth does the most heavily armored class in the game also offer superior mobility? It’s time to get serious about class roles and stop bullkittenting your community with balance patches that do nothing but unbalance the game further.
Yeah, it’s going to become a standard tactic to always negate the first blast. And it’s not like we can prime the proc so its application is going to be woefully predictable. I see a lot of ways to counter the necromancer here but I don’t see many ways for the necromancer to get ahead against skilled opponents. Seems like we’ll be even more reliant on fear sticking to accomplish anything.
And I’d be all for removing Dumbfire and reverting the multitude of nerfs which came with it.
(edited by Fungalfoot.7213)
It’s not that effective in SPvP either if you’re up against an organized team since unlike a block or evade it can only suck up so much. A focused necromancer is a dead necromancer. It is however exceedingly effective in hotjoins. But I digress.
An overstatement.
Not when you look at how much they’ve peeled bleeds in previous updates. And this is just another change aimed at combating our conditon dump which is the only thing we really do well as a class. Hey, I don’t like it but that’s the reality of the situation.
So they kick us straight in the balls without offering any real alternatives. Vampirism still sucks and power is just a poor imitation of what other classes are far more capable of.
They haven’t changed the numbers at all, except an un-nerf in PvP.
The proc is 3s of burning every 10s, which is the same as now. The only change is that it went from being a completely random proc on Crit, to being on LB. So the change just adds play/counterplay to the skill. Necros can finally control when it is applied, and opponents can potentially avoid it.
Let’s not beat around the bush. What this really changes is that you’re going to have to sit through the lengthy life blast animation every single time you want to apply it. This will result in a very significant damage loss for condition builds who will no longer be able to proc it using their standard rotation. As it was a very reliable proc to begin with them making it not random doesn’t really benefit us. It does however benefit opponents tremendously due to how easy life blasts are to dodge.
I assume that they know the numbers and are simply happy because Dumbfire is getting nerfed and hope that this will lead to the class getting some much needed core improvements.
And while I too think that Dumbfire is something which should have never tainted this class I don’t share that positive outlook. Most likely this will just lead to our class becoming even more irrelevant. I’d love to see some hard numbers on how popular the necromancer is at the moment.
Hey ANet, could you guys please combine the necromancer and the thief into one class? It’s obvious enough you don’t give a kitten about either so maybe this would help.
Oh and while we’re at it how about rangeneers? Come on, we have to combat the warrior dominance somehow. Let us combine!
@Fungalfoot
Ok, but don’t take it personally.
Probably some guy from ANET is rolling his face on the top of the ladderboard with his Hambowrrior. I can’t do anything about it.
None of us can and that is exactly what is so frustrating about this. There were tons of excellent suggestions for much needed improvements and every single one went ignored by them.
Personally I’ve never been a fan of Dumbfire or even our role as condition dumpers. I’ve played power and hybrid builds exclusively. I would have welcomed these changes if they came accompanied by something positive. But no, they took all the suggestions for nerfs and none of the suggestions for improvements. Something as simple as giving us back our shroud block would have been fantastic but they couldn’t even be bothered to do that.
@Fungalfoot:
These are just balances to make the Necromancer less reliant on passive procs and playstyle and promote more counterplay.
It’s not that bad ATM.
Meanwhile healing signet gets a 8% nerf. Yeah, they’re totally worried about passive play ruining the game.
And you know, that’d be neat if the playstyle of this class wasn’t absolutely lethargic by design. You act like we actually have a purpose in the meta outside of condition dumping. We don’t. We have kitten mobility and no real ways to mitigate damage. None of this is going to change. We’re just going to be less effective at dumping conditions.
Overall, MMs will see nerfs as the rest of the class is fixed, just because the “base” Necromancer will get stronger, so the added strength of MM will need to come down a little.
Where are these supposed fixes? I’m seeing no signs of them actually trying to improve the class. None of these changes have any impact at all except for making the necromancer weaker in SPvP which is apparently the only thing they care about.
Maybe last year I would have bought that this is just a small step on the long road of fixing the class and undoing the many mistakes they’ve done with it but now? I’ll stick with my mesmer until EQN rolls out.
Love how they keep giving warriors the silk glove treatment while kittenting all over the less popular classes. Way to prove the class bias we all already knew existed.
The Dumbfire change would have been a good change if other areas had gotten buffed. But as it stands it’s a huge nerf to our damage with no compensation. They need to learn how to give and take – how to balance. As it stands they just keep on kittenting on certain classes. The game won’t last unless the balance team changes their methods. I haven’t played in over a month myself and I don’t see myself returning for this.
This is what happens when you balance your game based on metrics instead of common sense. The necromancer class just isn’t popular enough to get the silk glove treatment.
Also of note:
- Complete radio silence on Vamp Signet. /shocking
What, you actually expect them to work on improving their broken kitten before breaking more? Impossible.
Absolutely disgusting.
Are they seriously planning on nerfing necromancers again? I don’t even…
This thread makes it really obvious that they should have stuck to the idea of a cosmetic only gear grind instead of kittening around with stats. Now if zerker ends up nerfed they’re going to have to deal with a throng of angry people demanding new stats. What a mess.
I’ve always believed that dodging should be a lot more limited and used as a last resort to get out of a jam rather than the first. Reduce the two dodges we currently have into one and bake a stun break into it to make it your one get out of jail card. Then slap on an appropriate cooldown and there you go.
The mitigation of damage should be accomplished through things like active blocking.
At this point I’d be happy if the switch was just instant. The delay is what will kill you.
And countless of players have tried the warrior out in SPvP only to find out that they’re suddenly topping the charts without putting in any effort. This isn’t an argument about whether the warrior is overpowered or not because it is. This is an argument about how to address that issue and right now healing signet makes for the easiest target but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the only target. It all depends on what role the warrior is meant to fill.
ANet has to become a lot clearer on that point.
We had all that before HS was buffed and we were regarded as absolute trash in all forms of PVP.
Some people did amazing stuff with the warrior in WvWvW before all the overbuffing and the class has always had superb mobility. The issue now is that it has superb mobility and superb sustain. Something has got to give because as it stands the class is rightly viewed as the official easy mode. Either nerf the sustain or the mobility. If warriors were sluggish juggernauts easily kited I’m sure the playerbase would be more inclined to tolerate this.
Most of the ultra rich players you see in game have either bought their way to success using their wallets or simply done the smart thing and flipped.
Either way gold is kind of a joke currency and I really wish the best items were tied to actual in-game accomplishments but I guess it’s going the other way now that PvP is going to be running on gold too.
If Jon is serious about wanting warriors to be the masters of sustain he’s going to have to explain exactly what necromancers are supposed to be and he’s also going to have to consider some serious nerfs to warrior mobility because right now it’s just looking like class favoritism of the worst variety. If warriors were forced to stick around after engaging in battle heal signet might be more justifiable. It’s their ability to effortlessly weave in and out while enjoying continuous healing which makes it all so utterly absurd.
I think the crux of the issue here is that the powers that be appear confused as to what exactly the warrior is meant to be – and no, it cannot be all these things at once. The class needs weaknesses. Pronounced weaknesses.
Jon, I thought necromancer was meant to be the sustain class of Guild Wars 2. Has warrior now taken over that role? If so don’t you think the class needs a huge reduction in mobility and that the necromancer should be retooled to fit another purpose? While I agree that healing signet’s active is kitten the passive is currently game breaking when you look at the warrior class as a whole.
Such audacity! How dare they try to make more money off of their players! They should be giving us free updates and let the people who buy gems get nothing in return! I paid my 50 bux, I should get everything forever!
They should be working on proper expansion packs and then retail those like they did back with Guild Wars. Not everybody is interested in the whole shelling out dosh for gaudy trinkets to separate oneself from the unwashed masses selling point they’ve got going on right now. Some of us are still holding out for fun content. A VIP status don’t really mean all that much in a dead game now does it?
Thankfully they quickly cleared matters up here and this is fairly understandable for the Asian market. Maybe 2014 won’t be so bad after all. We’ll see.
Buying gems makes one elite? As a FFXI veteran who cleared CoP years before it was nerfed, I laugh at your notion of elite.
To be fair, there is nothing really worth achieving in this game and that has been an issue since day one so people measuring their worth with their wallets here isn’t a new phenomenon. I was just hoping that we’d see a change come 2014. Certainly not this.
If true this will be the death of the game. ANet has lied about a lot of things but something this bad would simply not allow them to function as a developer anymore. It would probably be the worst betrayal I’ve ever witnessed in this entertainment medium.
You know, it could be worse….
You could be a ranger
I’m a necromancer who rolls with a ranger… and an engineer. We’re not very good at picking winners.
Healing signet does kind of go against the stated goal of wanting heals to be a valuable resource. At least I believe that was a stated goal at some point. Anyway, yeah, passive survivability in this form is extremely bad for the health of the game.
Considering mesmers are currently the only ones holding the legions of facerolling warriors back from total and utter domination I’m rooting for team mesmer. At least mesmer takes some degree of skill to play.
Actually, as conditions get trimmed from Necromancer and every other profession has them, anyway, I think the chances the whole profession is removed increases – not just the forums.
I would be for that solution at this point. The class has no direction to it and death shroud is impossible to balance as it will either be too strong in duels or too weak in group encounters. It’s a poorly designed class overall and its total collapse was to be expected.
I rolled a necromancer buying into the advertised minion master shtick but now mesmers have taken that role over entirely with phantasms. So what do we have left as a class? Our increasingly waning condition pressure, I suppose. Leeching hasn’t ever been viable and if you really want to heal while hitting things you should just roll a guardian since they do it so much better.
Because they’re planning on deleting the class and giving us all free class change tokens.
I hope.
Let’s just say that my mesmer has been getting a lot of playtime as of late.
Assuming a fully buffed necromancer sure. But that means the necromancer is going to have to look for a lot of outside assistance while the heavies are in far better positions of actually providing it. This is why the necromancer is considered a wasted slot.
Only minion master necromancer will result in higher sustain and that’s unviable in practice. The balance is completely borked and at this point reigning the heavy armor classes in would probably cause an outrage ANet just isn’t willing to deal with.
For me most of the outrage comes from the fact that ANet pretended they were interested in communicating and then proceeded to ignore every single concern raised and kitten out another patch which just screws the balance even harder. They couldn’t even properly justify any of the nerfs.
In what kind of game do the heavy armor classes also dish out the most damage?
Oh yeah, this one.
I think Skullcrack is a good place now. Ideally, all of our high impact skills should allow for counter-play via a clearly telegraphed attack animation. It’s something we’re constantly thinking about when we look at existing skills, and doubly so when we brainstorm new ones.
Making combat less spammy and putting a greater emphasis on correct skill timing is indeed a step in the right direction.
But you’re in for a whole lot of redesigning to reach that goal. The thief for example is almost entirely based on these spammy attacks. How will that be addressed?
No but being entirely incapable of countering that focus unlike every other class in the game does. A focused necromancer is a dead necromancer. Our superb condition damage was meant to compensate for that glaring weakness but that no longer holds up.
The Warrior heal actually got its cast time reduced by 75% (1 second to 1/4 second).
This, if anything, just shows that ArenaNet is utterly incapable of balance. It was already an extremely potent heal and they actually went and buffed it while leaving the necromancer heal dead in the water.
Just what the game needed – more passive play!
Said no one ever. At this point hiring Ghostcrawler to oversee balance would be a step up.
Chin up, guys. At least they buffed reanimator!
I am so done with this kittening game.
They don’t like comparing classes and that’s exactly why we end up with monstrosities like the healing signet. Anyway, dark pact is extremely strong and one of the best tools in the necromancer kit. The issue, as always, is just that warriors play in an entirely different league.
Merging it with the staff mastery trait would make sense and put it on the same level as axe training. I’d also agree with the suggestion to make it into a universal damage buff since the staff auto attack is absolutely miserable.